He would lead the practice sessions with his whole soul and body. We would follow suit, all the while, with the band desperately and helplessly trying to catch up, some times upping and sometimes dipping the pitch, but all in vain. Gosh! How I wish they realized in those days, that the only music that the average Kazhakian had in his blood was the monotonous cadence that went on and on, like that bee on steroids.

Unni Sir guaranteed each of the footballers two years of meaningful life with a sense of accomplishment and one which they could cherish for the rest of their life.Overcoming challenges, his Warriors marched on and he lead them from the front even while negotiating the whirlpool of personal tragedies which life throws up regularly to make the journey increasingly interesting. He led us to a point where winning and losing ceased to matter and then led us on further, molding us into leading life king size, and maybe end up as believers of karma.

When I see the, hoisted national flag outside my office waving gently in the slow breeze, my heart fills with the memory of all those soldiers known and unknown who gave up their today to keep our tomorrows safe and all those who lost their life to keep our nation flag up there, flying. And it dawns on me yet again that I am an Indian and then my heart starts echoing the parting words of Rambo in First Blood, my childhood hero I grew upon and I join the chorus with all those brave hearts,”Do our country love us as much as we love it ?”

He was trying to copy a very complicated Vedic scene. Dayafter day, he made exquisite progress, from the crown, he progressed to then the gadda, sketched the armor, shield, all of which of course with the printed picture exactness. A trifle irritated by the sudden disturbance to his deep fugue, and to appease the demanding crowd, he quickly sketched a landscape, with a Jeep plying over a bridge as the central theme, and handed it over to Roy, dismissing the crowd back to their seats.

It wasn’t just adultery that roamed the dark corners of the Art Class. At times when Roy was around in session, even medieval torture and eerie natural forces made their presence felt too. It also had its surprising after-effects. Art Class gave me one of my staunchest allies in my gleeful journey to depravity, my thicker-than-blood-brother, dear Mukkulam aka Roy V Mathew.

On the first day of my art class, I was given a huge white sheet of art paper, which, admittedly, I didn’t feel like spoiling by drawing on it ! Instead, I strongly felt that it would have been better put to use had it been issued to the students for wrapping up their books for safe upkeep. But there it was, spread in front of me, helplessly pinned down on the drawing board, waiting to be ravished and I never had even an iota of willingness to violate its purity.

It is a moonlit night around two decades ago, when CT, strongly supported by ones like me swoops in on a poor rooster caged in the campus bus driver’s residential quarters ( the C-type quarters). With required stealth and swiftness, its neck is grabbed before it could send out its signature sound ‘KOK’ and the same is surgically removed with the accompanying gush of blood . Like any good commando operation, things are pretty much planned in advance and hence the cooking site is catered with utensils, articles required for lighting fire and condiments – except the unavoidable aqua.